Last week, papers in the UK reported a horrifying incident that took place in the mining village of Edlington. Two children, aged nine and 11, were tortured to within an inch of their lives.
These children were lured into a waste ground, robbed, beaten, burnt with cigarettes, sexually humiliated, strangled with barbed wire and stabbed while being told that they were going to die. One of the boys was found covered in blood and the other had been hit in the head and left for dead.
Repulsive as any crime on children inherently is, this doesn’t sound unusual so far. The extraordinary aspect about this incident, however, is that the perpetrators of this heinous crime were aged 10 and 11!
These feral children were raised by a violent and drunken father, who beat them and made them fight each other, and a drug-addicted mother. She had seven children from three fathers and abandoned them to the point where the kids foraged and fed themselves from garbage bins.
The Daily Mail called it the symptom of a social and cultural emergency. Suddenly the guilt shifts from the individuals—in this instance small boys—to society at large.
I use the incident to highlight the responsibility that society has towards creating a secure environment for its future generations. And this is a challenge that India faces with respect to its internal security.
How do we make our citizens realize the role they have to play at an individual level in promoting inclusive growth? This is not about moral social service. It is about ensuring the survivability of our children.
Also Read Raghu Raman’s earlier columns
Next time you are on the streets, look around. You’ll see hundreds of street kids who forage, fight and claw their way through life, inch by inch, day after day. You will see babies, drugged and farmed out for begging, children mutilated, injured in accidents and beaten regularly by motorists. As I said, this article is not about moral responsibility. It is about asking a very practical question: What do you think happens to these graduates of the vicious school of street life? Those who survive are deeply scarred, sadistic, with no regard for social values or at least values as we—those who have had a privileged existence—define them.
They become fodder for criminal gangs, drug peddlers, violent crime and terrorism. And the society sets the police on them when they have crossed the point of no return. But we stand by and watch, while they are systematically tottering towards that Rubicon.
Human trafficking is the third largest criminal business in the world. It is also intricately linked to the first two, drugs and illegal arms trade. And this happens right under our noses.
It is ironic that while we are appalled and judgmental about historically barbaric practices such as slave trading or apartheid, human trafficking is a thriving 21st century industry that cannot possibly flourish without being condoned by society or connivance by government.